Newcastle besieged by Scots

IIMAGINE Newcastle encircled by a 25-feet wall with flags aflutter and 100 soldiers in armour patrolling the towers and turrets.

That’s how the old town used to be. Back in an age when England was fearful of the separate, usually hostile kingdom of Scotland to the North, the Town Wall was built as a defence during the 13th and 14th centuries.

It had 17 towers (six of which survive). Sections of the wall also had the added protection of a deep ditch outside the walls. Between the towers were rectangular turrets, with loopholes for archers.

In January 1644, it was this heavily fortified Newcastle which a large Scottish Covenanter army approached.

The nation was in the midst of the Civil War – that bloody and complicated conflict which pitted Royalists against Parliamentarians and Scots.

Newcastle was resolutely Royalist. Protected by its mighty walls, the town was the centre of the nation’s coal supply and was of major economic and strategic importance.

Coal prices had soared and, in London, it was commonplace to hear the complaint: “No hope of taking Newcastle by storm, and no coal this winter.”

Although the town was formally asked to surrender on multiple occasions, Newcastle’s mayor John Marley remained resolute in the face of Alexander Leslie, the Scottish Earl of Leven.

The Earl initially did not have the resources to storm the town.

The tide changed after the battle of Marston Moor, in North Yorkshire, saw the Royalists heavily defeated, leaving no army to oppose 10,000 Scots as they marched towards Tyneside.

In August, 1644, a small Royalist force defending Windmill Hills, high above the River Tyne at Gateshead, was easily swept away.

A major bombardment of Newcastle from the new vantage point began, but the town fought back. Left, the siege of Newcastle came to an end 375 years ago; right, Sir John Marley, Newcastle’s Royalist mayor. Today he has a statue on the city’s Northumberland Street

A Parliamentary writer complained: “The enemy from the castle doth mightily annoy us with their great artillery.

“The endeavours of both sides are indefatigable and in the thick clouds of smoke the thunder of the cannon perpetually disputing.”

Newcastle was under close siege. The people of the town endured nine weeks of near starvation, with no food or firewood imported. The end was nigh.

On October 19, 1644 - 375 years ago tomorrow - the town walls of Newcastle were breached by the Scots for the first and only time.

When some of the gates on the Western wall were blown up by explosives, the Scots poured in, with bitter hand-tohand fighting taking place in the Bigg Market.

Three days later “Sir John Marley, with his brave associates, came forth of the castle, and surrendered themselves prisoners to the Scottish army”.

The Scots would remain in control of Newcastle and its lucrative coal trade until early 1647.

Today, Marley’s statue looks down on shoppers from above the Samsung store on Northumberland Street.